Friday, 22 June 2012

It was too hard to take my photo today. I am going to describe my meal instead. We always have the same trays. On it today I had fish, chips and peas with a yoghurt and some water. The fish was golden brown and very crunchy. It was the the size of my hand but thinner. The fish inside was white with bits of brown and grey. We don't get vinegar or salt only tomato sauce which is served to you on a spoon. I ate my chips with my fingers and dipped them in the ketchup. The peas are hard to get on your fork so I stabbed them.

'Our school is from eight o'clock till one or two clock most days. Sometimes we have afternoon classes. Some pupils go to after-school care and only these eat at school. There is either salad or soup, and always a dessert. Dessert is sometimes fruit, but we always get fruit one hour after lunch.

This is Tuesday's lunch "Wurstsalat"

It's sausage meat mixed with tomato, cheese, lettuce, gherkins. Dessert was a raspberry pudding, but we don't have a picture of it.

I am planning a Porridge Party if we manage to raise over £100,000 for Mary's Meals. We are really close now so I hope we make it over the weekend!

VEG

VEG's Dad here.

School holidays start soon here in Scotland. We are looking for schools from around the world to guest blog on NeverSeconds and show us their daily dose of school dinners. For one week it's your chance to show us what's important to you about your lunch. If your class would like to take on the challenge please get in touch with NeverSeconds@gmail.com . Many thanks!

96 comments:

I've been here since about day 4, hungrily devouring stories, photos, comments and also news about this elsewhere. I may be confused about one detail because I've not heard about it lately...

At your school can you not have fresh fruit unless you finish your meal? Is this true? Fruit is an important part of any diet.

Do you rarely choose fruit? Or perhaps there's simply not enough fresh fruits for every student and so it is presented (or withheld) as a treat for those still hungry? Even after sweets? If that is the national tradition, so be it?

Please clarify.

I would send you a picture of what I ate today but it was too embarrassing (not fruit). Thank you, good luck, and take as many days offline as you like. Live your life. I'm very proud of you, and hope your hand feels better!

I was confused about that as well. In one of the blogs she mentions "no fruit since I didn't finish my dessert" and I thought that was sort of a shame, since it would be more nutritious for students to eat fruit over some chocolate Australian Crunch bar..?That seems awfully backward to me!

' As well as raising money for charity, Martha says blogging has improved her school meals. “They’re nicer and much bigger,” she beams. “Now we’re allowed an EXTRA piece of fruit if we’ve finished our meal, and as much bread and salad as we want.” '

So VEG - whatever you decide, or not, to do next, or not, continue to enjoy being a kid. Study hard. Play hard. Live well. Eat well. Thank you! Goodbye.

Congrats on the 100,000 mark.. Big thanks to the 3,000 donator,"From all of at us saying a big WELL DONE Veg for feeding so many childern,Donation by Sash Window Repair Man .co.uk on 22/06/12£3,000.00"

WAY TO GO!!!! Keep it up Martha.. you've still got a lot of steam stored up there...could go higher still.. Let's hope it does..

Congratulations! You did it! What an amazing achievement for anyone let alone someone as young as you are. Well done you!

Please keep your brilliant blog going for as long as you can. It makes others think seriously about what children are eating at school. This is such an important topic.

I became interested in what schools were serving back when I was 11 back in 1971 (many, many years ago!). We had what I guess you might call "Junior Dinner Ladies". Where I lived (La Jolla, California in the US) children in grade 6 at my elemantary school were offered the chance to work in the school cafeteria during lunch - serving the meals and doing the dishes. I did so for most of the school year, usually one or two days a week. For our efforts we got our lunch for free and got an ice cream bar for pudding. We were also allowed to leave class early for lunch and went back to class when were finished working, missing at least half an hour. Always appreciated! Lunch was a main dish with one or sometimes two vegetables, something starchy (bread, potatoes, rice or pasta) and a pudding. The only drink allowed was plain milk which we had to finish. They even had milk monitors to check that you drank it all! If you didn't you weren't allowed to leave until you had finished the carton. On Fridays you could buy an ice cream bar but we were given one whenever we worked in the cafeteria. I was allowed to sit in a meal planning meeting once - probably because I never stopped asking questions about what was being served. I can happily say that we all wore hair nets and I rarely found a hair in the food!

Very glad to apprciate Martha for her valuable efforts to feed the children through her bog. Really wonderful and the blessing and paln of our lord. I am realy apprciate and tears on my eys to see her blog every day.

At the same time I feel very bad on me that I am working for the children in India and trying to get support from the people but very difficult to get.

Now I am realy get confidant realistion with Martha and enhanced my efforts.

I request you please see our casue also which is in Gloabl Giving/ just gving to give a meal and education to the needy children in India.

My congratulations to you and your dad on now raising in excess of £100,000!!

You probably don't fully realise what brilliant work you have done on so many levels, or how the simple premise of your school dinner blog has touched so many people, and will go on to touch so many more.

"Pieces of hair - 0" is always nice, but from experiance working in a busy kitchen for a few years. Much of the hair people eating a meal find in their food it actually their own! It falls into their meal from their head/eyelash/brows as they eat it!

Example

Someone sent a meal back to me once with a long black hair in it. As my hair is brown, and gets shaved if it gets over 10mm long, and the waitress was blond, it seems unlikely it was mine or the waitress' hair, but the family did have a daughter with them, and she had long black hair....But would they believe it? No.

Neverseconds but foreverfirst. Well done Martha. I am a daily visitor to your blog and like seeing what people eat elsewhere. Perhaps over the holidays we can see what you eat at home. Try helping your mum or dad prepare the meal. This is what millions of girls your age will doing every day.

Martha, again well-done on everything. It was an absolute pleasure to donate to your cause, and utterly demolish that 100.000 barrier. I hope the news companies carry your 100k success and more donations continue to pour in over the weekend. Enjoy the party you deserve it.

My children broke up for the summer holidays today (8 weeks in Stirling!). So we celebrated after swimming lessons with a carry-out fish supper. But we tried a new chippy, and it wasn't as good as the usual one. It's interesting that something as simple as fish and chips can be so different, depending on the way it's cooked and the quality of the ingredients. Our battered fish had been sitting in the heater for quite a while so it was quick to serve but had gone dry and the batter was really thick and crunchy. In fact my 5 year old couldn't cut it by himself. I think this is probably the problem with your school lunches. They look fine on the menu, but the reality is lacking in quality and tastiness. Enjoy your last few days at school. Nearly summer hols.Sophie

Last week, I kicked this story to the BBC and Twitter at about 8:30am and by the end of the day I was in tears of joy about how many people responded. This week I am still in tears of joy at how much you have raised in a week. I hope it just continues. It makes me feel that people are in the main are decent and it just takes a little girl in Scotland to touch peoples hearts all over the world.

Thank you somuch for you apprciation to Martha. Really wonderful that she did. I wish to request you also, is it possible for you to suport our cuase in India to give education and a meal through just gving. That will be great help to poor children in India. We are struggling to get a best fundrsing volunteer for our project. Please help us. Thank you so much!

I must say, it is quite ridiculous how addicted I am to your blog! I read about it on the Huffington Post and now I check it every morning (and I checked it again just now and was excited to see a fresh post!) I am a professional fundraiser in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, and I am just thrilled that you are using this blog to raise money for such a worthy cause. You have a bright future in non-profit management.

Whaaatt is a porridge party????!!!!???? Btw yes I know I keep commenting... Congrats btw on the 100k!!! <3 ur work!!!! Keeps it going ano it's the summer hols but don't forget to blog after the hols!!!!

Dear freind, Really wonderful and very great that you helped the children in need through Martha. Thank you sooooooomuch. I am anthony from India directly working with children. You know many children here are not get a meal and also education. I request you please help children with us also in India through just gving/ global givingPlease see the cause in the following links. http://www.justgiving.com/project/1869153

What a fantastic achievement to raise a £100,000 to change people's lives. I've loved reading your blogs and I hope you will continue to find ways to write about your life and your achievements. I have a suspicion that you are going to lots more to say!

Veg, you are BRILLIANT! I love reading your blog. I hope you grow up to be a food critic. More people should review restaurants the way you review your school dinners! I've nominated you for an Illuminating Blogger Award (http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/), because I think your blog inspires and teaches us so much. Keep up the good work!

Well done Veg, breaking 100k is remarkable. You restore my faith in humanity and remind all of us that when people come together we can do really great things. I think there are a number of adults who could learn by your example. Keep up the good work!

Hi Veg, I hope you have a great summer break. I work for an NGO in San Francisco (Project Open Hand) that provides meals to people who are very sick and home all by themselves. I'd be so excited to take one of the weeks and send pictures of the meals we send to our friends who are hungry. What do you think?

Hello, my name is Vinicius, study in a Public School in Brazil, I read a news site here that you were looking for people from other countries to photograph the meals here, and I think this a great opportunity to publish the wretched meal that Dan here , My email is: vgobira@hotmail.com, I would be grateful if you reply ..

hiU r an inspiration to many and i hope u will keep going like this and may b it can become something really big and helpful later for unfortunate people of the world.This world is becoming a more unfair and cruel place everyday and is in need of angels like u.I wish my daughter will grow up to become a martha payne.

hi my little friend. i am Faezeh. i'm a reporter in Iran. i saw your beautiful Weblog. i use it in our news agency too as another my coworkers in other country.good lock little girl! f.zahiri66@gmail.com

For me, the best thing about this blog has not been the heightened awareness of bad school food, the Davida-Goliath fight or the funds raised, wonderful as they all are; it has been the contact with other children around the world.

Veg has not only guaranteed herself an A* in GCSE Geography, but she is creating ties with all kinds of cultures, and anything that unites us has to be a good thing.

One thing I’m seeing in these comments that is giving me pause is that I wonder if people are losing sight of the fact that Veg is just 9 years old.

I see people telling her that she should be a professional fund-raiser, or a professional food critic, etc. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I changed my mind about what I wanted to be when I grew up quite a few times between the age of 9 and when I actually had to make a decision about that. In fact, I've even made a couple of major career changes as an adult!

Veg has been quoted (a couple of times) as saying that she thinks she might like to make a career as a journalist. Might we please allow her that ambition rather than offering our own suggestions for careers?

I’m actually quite impressed by a 9-year-old keeping up a daily blog for two months. I would respectfully suggest other readers try to hark back to when they were nine years old and ask themselves if they really thought they’d have had the “stick-to-it-ivness” to maintain a 5-times per week blog for that long.

I thoroughly enjoy reading Veg’s blog each day as much as anybody else. But I also try to keep her age firmly in mind, and understand that it’s totally unreasonable to expect Veg to keep doing this for years. In fact, once Veg and Veg-Dad have their meetings with the council/school and get some changes made regarding school lunches, I highly suspect that Veg will decide that her “NeverSeconds” blog has accomplished its purpose and will move on to other things that interest her. While she most definitely is an incredibly intelligent, articulate, and socially conscious for a 9-year old, she is still a child.

So I beg you, her loyal readers, to please remember her age, and allow her to do the things that other 9-year olds do. Don’t attempt to lock her into a career choice (particularly not one of her own choosing) at this age. Don’t try to “guilt” her into continuing a daily blog after she’s made the changes she hoped to accomplish.

I have to say I agree with the above. Whilst continuing to fully applaud Martha for her work and the raising of both awareness and funds - we all forget the price there is to pay for making this happen.

Whilst it would be good if Martha can continue this blog in some way that she is happy with - she has made her impact now and should be allowed to return to a "normal" less hassled life (and her family).

Hopefully the furore will settle and this will be something that Martha will be able to look back at with a smile and a sense of pride in her achievement. And maybe - one day - as a fully fledged journalist, she will write about what it was like to be catapulted to fame. That is, of course, as the previous writer says..she decides at age 18 that she still wants to be a journalist!

Martha is keen to do many things and I am so proud of her sticking to her blog until the end of term. Her enthusiasm for food and interest in what other children eat has grown hence we will have guest schools blogging here from around the world.

Martha is very keen to visit the Friends of NeverSeconds kitchen in Malawi and take part in school life there. If we do make it there she has already decided to blog everyday about the trip. In her words 'All the kind people that helped build the kitchen will want to hear all about it.'

Hi Martha, I have been on holiday in Scotland until today and watched all the news coverage of your blog with interest. I am a Rotarian in London and have been involved with our Young Chef competitions which get children to cook a cheap, nutritious meal. I am very impressed with your blog, so much so that I have started my own! I will take a photo of my meal at my Rotary meeting on Monday and share it with you!

For me the best part was waking up in the morning and before all else open the laptop to see how much money you 'Veg' had raised. Today the media promotes bad news over good news, so to see this marvelous ray of human kindness coming from a 9 years old girl was a healthy way to start my day. Kindness breeds kindness and that's why I helped push this over the 100.000. Veg please enjoy the summer holiday while the rest of us learn a lesson in kindness and compassion. sash window repair man. Brighton

Your endeavor is certainly commendable and huge congrats on the amount of money you've raised. There are not enough young people who get out and do things as you do. Would you be interested in writing a piece on the Manic Thought Society on the standard of school meals?

Mahatma Gandhi once said: "you must be the difference you want to see in the world".

Your blogging routine is making some noise, congratulations! The fact that you are trying to visit Africa is really noble, but the poor condition on the food served to the schools has more to do with the local corrupted system than anything else and it is more or less relevant depending on which country you are.

In Brazil, for instance, the food is barely eatable. News keep breaking stating that all across the country the schools are serving expired food to its students. Africa shouldn't be very different from here.

Watch out there, and keep up the good work. Perhaps one day I'll have a daughter with your reasoning!

I was at the Britmums Brilliance in Blogging awards this weekend and I chatted to a fellow mum about your blog. Keep it up, it's bang on what people want to be reading about!

If you don't get enough guest posts from other kids around the world, I'd be happy to come up with a meal costing less than £2 which is nutritionally balanced. I'm sure a lot of other bloggers would be happy to do the same to keep your excellent blog going!

It would be my hope that Veg doesn't let go of her blog entirely. I know it's named "NeverSeconds", but that's just because it started out being about school lunches. That doesn't mean, however, that Veg could never write about anything else.

I adore Veg's writing style, and would love to see her occasionally blog about things of interest to her, as she felt the inclination to do so. Certainly not every day, or even every school day, as she has been, but occasionally, when she feels she has something she’d like to share.

I believe I read somewhere that the Payne family was going to make a trip to Malawi to see the new “Friends of NeverSeconds” kitchen. It would be wonderful if Veg could post a few photos of her trip and tell us about the new kitchen and the students the money she raised will be feeding.

But then, that is my wish. It may well not be Veg’s. And, at her age, enough decisions get made for her that Veg should consider herself perfectly free to pursue her own dreams and wishes.

Veg, I know this doesn’t mean much to you right now. But I hope that, when you get a bit older, you’ll look back on this and understand that you, in fact, were “the change you want[ed] to see in the world.” That one voice, even the voice of a child, can make such a vast difference. That you inspired thousands more to follow your lead. And that you handled all of the media attention (both good and bad) with a grace far beyond your years.

We have been tremendously privileged to witness this small part of your life. We thank you, and we wish you all the joy and happiness that life can bring.

hello Martha, I'm from chile and speak Spanish, my English is very bad =) come to your blog for a story of a Chilean newspaper, I leave the link http://www.mer.cl/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?dt=2012 -06 to 19 & newsid = 55227 & BodyID = 1 & PaginaId = 12 would like to congratulate for your initiative and get on with it. I'm a journalism student and I have 24 years and from Chile, Latin America, I send my congratulations and affection. bye

ah, I almost forgot.... I'm surprised the poor nutrition you are providing, in my country is much more nutritious, too bad

First I want to congratulate this little girl for her work with this blog. I would ask all people of the world to access my blog. The address is gauchaopina.blogspot.com. There you will find news from around the world. Come in, please. Congratulations again child.